(urth) Robots

[Jeff Wilson]

On 3/28/2012 8:16 PM, Allan Anderson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:20 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net
> <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
>     On 3/28/2012 1:11 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>
>         David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>             Without having read the story (though I will), I want to
>             comment that the
>             "moral robot" has been around at least since Asimov's "3
>             laws," which
>             basically hardwired robots to be MORE moral than humans.
>               Naturally they
>             represent the kind of rational and dispassionate morality
>             that we humans,
>             for a few hundred years at least, were imagined to aspire to.
>
>         More to the point, the Three Laws of Robotics are designed to make
>         Asimovian robots the perfect slaves, and thus a coded way of talking
>         about the situation of minority persons in general and blacks in
>         particular
>         at a time when you couldn't openly talk about that stuff in
>         popular fiction.
>         (If you have any doubt about this, note how hostile humans refer
>         to a
>         robot as "boy.") Reading Asimov's early robot stories with this
>         in mind
>         opens a whole world of social commentary right there on the surface.
>
>     Yes, the double-standard regarding murder is especially ironic in
>     that light. I don't actually recall that use of "boy"---but then I
>     wouldn't, would I.
>
>
> Ah, right--I remember this from Elijah Baley in _The Caves of Steel_,
> before he became a stinking robo-sympathizer. Excellent points. I
> remember wondering if Asimov was making a coherent point with that, or
> just appropriating a term for its emotional impact.

For purposes of scholarly research:

http://nullfile.com/ebooks/%28ebook%29%20Asimov,%20Isaac%20-%20I,%20Robot.pdf


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >